Leaving the "rice" behind

Now that I had realized that the modifcations I had done were really holding me back, the big wheels were sold in favor of some very light 15"SSR competion replicas, and upgraded the shocks to tokikko HP's, and raised the car up an inch all round. Finally, I ditched the playstation along with the heavy subwoofer. The difference in how the car drove was unbelievable. My sports car now handled, stopped, and acellerated as it should, my roadster was no longer a ricer. Well, it could have acellerated better... That's where things begin to get interesting :)

New wheels!
I was so proud of this shot.

"modding" early on

My first modifications, like many done by a young car owner really weren't improvements, but took the car in the wrong direction. On day one, I had added the 17", 42 pound wheels from my previous car, which I thought looked great, but anyone who knows been around these cars for awhile knows heavy wheels on a Miata are like a prisoner's ball and chain. Pretty soon, I did some other silly modifications, like replacing the passengers airbag with a Playstation 2 and a stereo headunit with a 6" flip out TV screen, and adding an eclipse DVC titanium 10 inch subwoofer and around 1000 watts of amplication. I also got a really crappy looking pair of "altezza" style chrome tail lights, a ridiculous looking rear spoiler, and finally some e-bay sourced coilovers on my stock shocks knocking the car into the ground. There was one good modification I had sense to add, a hard dog, double diagaonal roll bar. I thought this was all cool until sometime in 2002, when I made my first group mountain run up into the North Georgia mountans with about six or seven locals. It was during this trip, that I really learned how bad the poor wheels and tires were slowing me down. I also realized how ridculous my aluminum wing looked. I wanted the car to handle better, as well go faster. It was time for a change.

Playstation and Eclipse 7002 in the dash, well it was cool then.
This one shows the Hard Dog Roll bar, the only Decent mod that remains currently
A few red bits and an air filter don't hurt either, I guess..